No Shadows in the Desert by Samuel M. Katz

No Shadows in the Desert by Samuel M. Katz

Author:Samuel M. Katz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2020-03-05T14:38:33+00:00


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The GID was also Jordan’s primary foreign intelligence service working to protect the national interests. Most countries split the responsibility of internal security and overseas espionage between two agencies—the United States had the CIA and the FBI, Britain had MI6 and MI5, and Israel had the Mossad and the Shin Bet—but not the GID. Splitting the spy services into two separate but equal components was viewed as prudent to many who feared that one agency in control of too much information would become all-powerful. But when the GID was formed in the nascent days of the country, King Hussein wanted to keep the spies under one roof, under one centralized command: a singular service with an all-reaching mission inoculated from the interagency bickering and miscommunications that rival services had to contend with. The JAF’s military intelligence arm was the GID’s only true competition in the espionage business, and its focus was on the military capabilities of neighboring states and not the hybrid warfare threats from enemies near and far. Former CIA director George Tenet, when interviewed for the documentary The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs, illuminated the operational dilemmas involved in the espionage game when, reflecting about 9/11, he said, “If you can’t make the swivel between foreign and domestic, you’re gonna get hurt.”197

The GID spearheaded the intelligence-gathering effort against the Islamic State. Iraq was historically of major importance for Jordan. Iraq and Jordan shared a common history and often referred to each other as cousins. The Iraqi kings were Hashemites, after all. Iraq’s King Faisal I and Jordan’s King Abdullah I, who led their new mandates after the First World War, were brothers; King Faisal II, killed in a coup in 1958, and King Hussein of Jordan were cousins. And, historically, Jordan was an easy—and frequent—intelligence target for Saddam Hussein’s intricate army of spies and saboteurs. In 2003 the GID arrested a network of Iraqi spies who had plotted to poison water supplies used by American forces stationed near Zarqa; the Iraqis also planned to firebomb luxury hotels in Amman where American officers and government officials stayed.198

The GID officers who analyzed developments in Baghdad and who ran agents in the provinces were true subject-matter experts in all things Iraq. The Americans and allied services relied on the GID’s expertise and cultural intimacy with the men that now swore their allegiance to al-Baghdadi and the Caliphate.

The tribal connection was key to the GID’s ability to penetrate al-Baghdadi’s terrorist underground. The tribes in Jordan all had connections that transcended national boundaries and blended into Iraq. The tribes that shared connections across frontiers were known for the martial skills, their code of honor and their loyalty. “The tribal bonds are more important than religion and nationality,” a military intelligence officer named Nasser3 explained, “and those bonds certainly override any affiliation to any terrorist organization, even one that promises an Islamic State stretching to the four corners of the earth.”199 The tribe protected one another and, should a GID officer need



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